Page 64 of Antihero
My heart drops. She’s going to leave. Leave me. Like she should. But then I see her stop with the nose barely at the wave line, see her turn and gaze at the clifftop further on. She’s looking for me.
My leg throbs. The bleeding has stopped, but the ache is deeper as I run for the steep slope down towards the pebbles of the beach. Rain has made the dirt and rock slick, but I barrel down, heedless, hitting the pebbles with a pained grunt. The clouds swallow light, the wind is worse down here, whipping water up in sprays, blinding me even more.
But I begin my sprint up the beach anyway, towards Paige.
In the darkness, I’m nearing where I estimate the boat to be when I nearly collide with her as she runs in the opposite direction. I skid to a stop. Paige doesn’t. She sees me at the last moment and throws herself against me, arms flinging aroundmy neck. “You found me!” she gasps against my neck. I hold her as tight as she’s clutching me. “I didn’t want them to catch you if you were with me. But… I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t. Without you.”
In my peripherals, I sense the roaming flashlights of the police force atop the cliff, their shouts on the wind. They’re working out the only way off the island. They’ll be down here soon.
Reluctantly, I press Paige back, so I can see her face in what light reflects off the water. She’s tugging me further up the beach, back towards the boat. I pull her to a stop, and when she meets my eyes, and sees the bag, her stash dangling from my elbow, I see doubt fester in her. “We never said this could be forever,” she says.
I smile sadly, touching her cheek where her wet hair plasters to her skin. It still can’t be forever. But not because I don’t want it. If this is the last time I hold her… “You can’t go out on the water in this.” Indeed, whitecaps abound; the sea, even this close to shore, roiling like some great monster lurks beneath. Lightning flashes only illuminate the horror, the impossibility of it, more. “You need to go back.”
I press the bag, the fortune, towards her. She only looks blankly at it, not taking it, then lifts her gaze to search my face. We’re both soaked. Her skin looks pale and wan. We shiver through the adrenaline. “I’m not going back.”
The waves ripple up towards the boat behind her, lapping at the stern. It’s only a small motorboat, not the type with a cabin, but with a small awning that threatens to be ripped off even here. The gusts rock it on the hard pebbled shore. There’s a tarp bundled up inside, in front of the back bench seats.
I hold on to Paige as she tries to press away. “You can’t run like this.Inthis. You’ll die.”
“I’d rather that than go where they want to take me,” she shouts over the wailing, the rain. She has to, now that there’sspace between us again. “I won’t be locked up again, at the mercy of strangers. Ever.”
I reach out, pulling her close again. She might be crying. I don’t know. “You won’t be locked up. They won’t find you. They’ll have me instead.”
Confusion, then understanding, dawns on her face. A shout behind me. Maybe they’ve spotted us.
“I’ll tell them that Goodry made the call on a grudge, that he wanted you locked up so you wouldn’t out him. I’ll tell them that I was the one who killed the others,” I say.
There’s still time for her to hide if I distract them. By surrendering. I’ve done it once before. What’s one last time? I’m about to tell her to run and hide when she glances over my shoulder, towards the way back up off the beach, some three minutes dead sprint from where we stand now. Paige steps closer, and grips my arm, hard enough that her fingers bruise. Her eyes find mine, grey in a flash of lightning. "Come with me. Now."
I glance at the dark sea, which looks like nothing more than oil boiling over a cooking pot. "We'll never make it! We'llbothdie!"
"We die in that direction, too.” She glances over my shoulder again. “Just slower.”
“You can still live, Paige…”
“Not without you.” She holds me, pleading. “Take a chance. One more. With me. Please!"
The shouts are closer now. They’ve spotted us, the flicker of a flashlight like someone running. And I see she’ll stand right here and be arrested with me. She’ll go to court contesting my claim to have been the Wraith. We’ll both go away, forever, and apart.
The beam strikes her face now, and I can see the fear, the hope in her eyes.
I know which of those I want to be responsible for.
I make my decision.
With one great heave, pouring every last bit of strength and whatever else can be conjured by hope, I shove the boat into the water. I throw the bag into the boat. Paige lets out something like an exalted whoop. She doesn’t let go of my arm, like she fears I’ll still leave her, and she jumps in first to then haul me after her. The boat rocks on the waves.
Five lawmen are reaching the spot we just stood, but as Paige cranks the motor, diving the nose of the boat straight through the first wave, somehow soaking us even more, we leave the shore, them, and that future behind.
The awning lasts two minutes, gone by the time we get past the break. I can hear and see nothing through the onslaught of 60-degree angle rain and the roar of the ocean, like it's mad we’ve dared step upon it. The island is a dark mass behind us as we crash the boat in a direct line away from it, heading simply to sea. Away. The headland disappears. The island disappears. Half an hour or three later, we’re still fighting the world.
The water comes to halfway up my calves, Paige is hauling bucket after bucket out as the wind whips yet more water against her. She could be screaming right next to me, but I wouldn’t hear a word over the chaos. I can’t hear my own yells, so fast are they whipped from my mouth. I try to steer towards where the mainland might be. Finally, the rain’s easing, but the wind and wildness aren’t. Both of us are shivering when I shut off the engine and the lights. We’re invisible. A few more minutes of helping Paige haul more water out of the bottom of the boat, and I’m able to ascertain that the wind and current are at least not taking us back towards the island, but rather towards the huge dark mass of the mainland.
I grab the bucket from her hands and tug Paige down into the bottom of the boat, pulling the tarp over us.
The boat rocks violently, lurching like an overzealous crib, but we cling to each other, shivering, possibly about to die as the worst wind so far tries its very best. The world rages around us.
“Whatever happens,” I shout just to hear myself, and Paige blinks up towards my face, the flashlight clutched against her waist. “I don’t regret a thing.”
